Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: Hey, welcome to Weird House Cinema. This is Rob Lamb.
Speaker 3: And I'm Joe McCormick. And today is going to be
Speaker 3: the first time on this show that we are going
Speaker 3: to be looking at films of the Silent Era. Rob
Speaker 3: and I were talking about this, and we think maybe
Speaker 3: this will be a recurring episode type where we look
Speaker 3: at a couple of short films from the Silent era,
Speaker 3: because most films of this time are not very long.
Speaker 3: Though maybe it would be hard to talk about for
Speaker 3: an entire episode on their own, so we're doing a
Speaker 3: double feature today.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Boy, Already there's a lot of to unpack though,
Speaker 2: because yes, it's true, there are a lot of short
Speaker 2: silent films, but they are also a fair number. When
Speaker 2: I was looking around at possibilities for today, some of
Speaker 2: them are longer than you'd expect them to be. And
Speaker 2: add to that that they are also silent films, which,
Speaker 2: if you know, unless you're dealing with very certain high
Speaker 2: standard silent films, you know, true classics of the time period,
Speaker 2: it could feel a lot longer than it actually is.
Speaker 3: You know, Oh yeah, totally. I mean I was thinking
Speaker 3: about this before we got started. I was thinking about
Speaker 3: that quote from Videodrome where Professor Brian Oblivion is talking
Speaker 3: about television and he says, the television screen is the
Speaker 3: retina of the mind's eye. Therefore, the television screen is
Speaker 3: part of the physical structure of the brain. Therefore, whatever
Speaker 3: appears on the television screen emerges as raw experience for
Speaker 3: those who watch it. Therefore, television is reality, and reality
Speaker 3: is less than television. Now that's turned up a little
Speaker 3: bit past the ten marker to get it into the
Speaker 3: weirdness of Cronenberg territory. But essentially there's a nugget of
Speaker 3: truth in that. And what I mean by that is
Speaker 3: that the films of the Silent era have generally not
Speaker 3: yet breached the raw experience threshold. They are works of
Speaker 3: art that have to be appreciated across a kind of
Speaker 3: mental distance and with effortful dedication of attention, more like
Speaker 3: a painting or a work of fiction. In text, like
Speaker 3: reading a book. You know, it takes a certain amount
Speaker 3: of sustained, effortful attention to read a story, but at
Speaker 3: a certain level of development. The techniques used in film
Speaker 3: and television, especially once you introduce synchronized sound, and like
Speaker 3: really good film editing techniques and good acting and all that.
Speaker 3: At a certain point, they become so well honed that
Speaker 3: no effortful dedication of attention is required and no distance
Speaker 3: must be crossed, Like the films of today are generally
Speaker 3: automatically engrossing, even if they're not good, as soon as
Speaker 3: you're aware of them, they're simply happening in your mind.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's a great point. So it's in a way,
Speaker 2: interacting with a silent film or even a challenging piece
Speaker 2: of stationary art, it's it's like one of those scenes
Speaker 2: in Cronenberg Scanners where you're staring intently at another thing
Speaker 2: and your your your brain is beginning to like boil
Speaker 2: and swell in your head as you concentrate and force
Speaker 2: yourself to merge your your consciousness with the art before you.
Speaker 3: Yeah, totally. And so while I would say I really
Speaker 3: enjoy a lot of silent films, but for me they
Speaker 3: are they are not as easy, not as automatic, not
Speaker 3: as magical as the films of the modern era that
Speaker 3: are automatically engrossing. Like that, they're more like the way
Speaker 3: I have to appreciate written fiction as text. You know
Speaker 3: that there's something that can be very rewarding to pay
Speaker 3: close attention to, but it takes work.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And you know, when you when you mentioned films
Speaker 2: of the modern era, it is worth noting just how
Speaker 2: quickly the technology and the craft evolve, because I think
Speaker 2: both of our films that we're going to focus on
Speaker 2: at lengths today are from the nineteen twenties. And as
Speaker 2: an experiment, I looked at the year nineteen twenty five
Speaker 2: and there's a silent film titled The Lost World from
Speaker 2: that year, based on the story by Sir Arthur Conan
Speaker 2: Doyle with dinosaurs in it. So of course it has
Speaker 2: pioneering stop motion dino animation in it that looks really cool,
Speaker 2: but it is still a silent film. There's still all
Speaker 2: these barriers to being able to properly immerse yourself in it.
Speaker 2: You fast forward just one decade and you have nineteen
Speaker 2: thirty five, that's the year Mad Love came out, which,
Speaker 2: you know, despite very much being an older film, you
Speaker 2: can watch it and you become immersed in it and
Speaker 2: you're feeling the characters and you feel like you're a
Speaker 2: part of this world, and it illustrates just how far
Speaker 2: it came in those ten years, you know, just how
Speaker 2: much the craft and the technology changed, enabling you to
Speaker 2: tell different types of stories and bring the viewer closer,
Speaker 2: you know, truly creating this videodrome situation that you described earlier.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and I would say there are a couple of
Speaker 3: things there. I mean, I would say, like you're pointing out,
Speaker 3: one of the main technological differences is synchronized sound. I
Speaker 3: mean that that's a game changer on its own. But
Speaker 3: on top of that, i'd say, with Mad Love, you
Speaker 3: have a really exceptional example from its era as well,
Speaker 3: the exceptional photographic techniques of Carl Freund. You know, behind
Speaker 3: the camera, you've got the exceptional charisma of the actors
Speaker 3: on screen, of course, the incomparable Peter Lorrie. Then you
Speaker 3: have the hyper nervous energy of Colin Clive in it,
Speaker 3: and so so all of that is true. But yeah,
Speaker 3: as time goes on, it's funny how much the techniques
Speaker 3: just like get developed and become sort of self referencing
Speaker 3: and industrial automatic cliches, where even the bad movies of
Speaker 3: today are typically very engrossing automatically, like if one's playing
Speaker 3: in the room, you so easily just start watching it
Speaker 3: and then it's just in your brain.
Speaker 2: Yeah, well, and it is worth with no you mentioned
Speaker 2: Carl Frond, the director of Mad Love. He of course
Speaker 2: was cinematographer on nineteen twenty seven silent masterpiece Metropolis. So
Speaker 2: the great work that would come with the talkies, I
Speaker 2: mean it very much emerges from the silent era. Like
Speaker 2: the silent era is the period in which the tools
Speaker 2: were coming online, the sort of substructure of our cinematic
Speaker 2: legacy was being built.
Speaker 3: That's a very good point, and I would say for me,
Speaker 3: Metropolis is probably the most engrossing silent film I've ever seen.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's one of the all time greats. So we
Speaker 2: have to mention Nosferatu, the Cabinet of Doctor Caligari, a
Speaker 2: trip to the Moon, and I believe we talked about
Speaker 2: a trip to the Moon a little bit in our
Speaker 2: Invention series on filmmaking and photography, where we discussed more
Speaker 2: of the technological side of the silent film era.
Speaker 3: Oh, that's a very good point. If you want to
Speaker 3: get some background before the rest of this episode, you
Speaker 3: could pause here, go listen to our entire series on
Speaker 3: the Invention podcast that we did. But I think we
Speaker 3: did one that started with the history of photography, beginning
Speaker 3: with the camera.
Speaker 2: Oh I think we started with the camera obscura.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, even going back to there, but then then
Speaker 3: going into photography and then going into motion pictures, and
Speaker 3: so if you want more contexts, probably a lot of
Speaker 3: things that at this point I don't even remember that
Speaker 3: we talked about, so I may have lost some really
Speaker 3: good contexts. So if you want, go listen to that
Speaker 3: and then come back and listen to the rest of this.
Speaker 3: But so today we are going to be talking about
Speaker 3: a couple of silent films. I think are they both
Speaker 3: from the early twenties. Minds from nineteen twenty two is
Speaker 3: yours from twenty.
Speaker 2: One, It is, indeed from nineteen twenty one. Yes, Okay, However,
Speaker 2: we are not doing any of the classics we discussed earlier.
Speaker 2: I think both of these are harder to come by.
Speaker 2: They're maybe more obscure, So, you know, I think they're
Speaker 2: both very fun choices, and in a way they're choices
Speaker 2: that circumvent your expectations the silent era, unless you, of course,
Speaker 2: are already just versed in the silent era and you
Speaker 2: know a lot of the history and the culture of
Speaker 2: what was going on at the time.
Speaker 3: Yeah, all right, Joe, do.
Speaker 2: You want to you want to go first and roll
Speaker 2: right into your selection?
Speaker 3: Sure, I'll go first. The film I selected for this
Speaker 3: episode is an early animated film by a German filmmaker
Speaker 3: named Latta Reineger, and it is the nineteen twenty two
Speaker 3: short film Cinderella. The German title is Ashenpuddle. Now. My
Speaker 3: main source of biographical information about Reineger comes from the
Speaker 3: twenty nineteen New York Times retrospective by Debbie Lockwood, which
Speaker 3: is part of a series called Overlooked, which seems to
Speaker 3: be sort of post hoc obituaries for remarkable people who
Speaker 3: originally didn't get obituaries in the Times when they passed away.
Speaker 3: So Lota Reineger was born Charlotte Reineger. I think Lotta
Speaker 3: is a German shortening of the name Charlotte. She was
Speaker 3: born on June second, eighteen ninety nine to carl and
Speaker 3: Eleanor Reineger and live in Berlin. And when she was
Speaker 3: in school she learned about something called scheren Schnitte, which
Speaker 3: means scissor cuts in German, and this was similar to
Speaker 3: a Chinese art form that dated back hundreds of years,
Speaker 3: but it had become popular in German art at the time,
Speaker 3: I think in Swiss art too, and essentially it consisted
Speaker 3: of making art by cutting silhouette images out of paper
Speaker 3: with fine shears. But Lotta Reineger enjoyed this art form
Speaker 3: when she was young, cutting out silhouettes of people. She
Speaker 3: knew not just to mount them on the wall or
Speaker 3: press them in an album, but she would make them
Speaker 3: move and act out scenes in a homemade shadow theater
Speaker 3: to do scenes from the plays of Shakespeare. And as
Speaker 3: she got older, she became interested in the at this
Speaker 3: point blossoming art form of film, originally thinking of becoming
Speaker 3: an actress, but she soon discovered the possibilities of animation
Speaker 3: as an art form that's unique to film, and of
Speaker 3: course this would have been still during the Silent era,
Speaker 3: and she ended up studying at the Max Reinhardt School
Speaker 3: of Acting under the German filmmaker Paul Wegner, where she
Speaker 3: showed off her talent for silhouette cutting, cutting out these
Speaker 3: figures in paper and then, to read from Debbie Lockwood's
Speaker 3: article quote, Wegner soon enlisted her to help with his
Speaker 3: nineteen eighteen film The Pied Piper of Hamlin, an adaptation
Speaker 3: of the folk legend about a man who's hired to
Speaker 3: play his magic flute to lure away rats from a
Speaker 3: German town. When the town refuses to pay him for
Speaker 3: his services, the piper plays another tune to hypnotize the
Speaker 3: children and lead them out of the town, never to
Speaker 3: be seen again. Wegner had Reineger help him animate wooden
Speaker 3: puppet rats for the film, and after this she had
Speaker 3: the bugs. She wanted to make films for a living,
Speaker 3: so she later met and married an art historian named
Speaker 3: Carl Koch, who she would collaborate with on a number
Speaker 3: of her films, and her career would go on at
Speaker 3: this point to span sixty years, including over seventy films
Speaker 3: animated by this silhouette cutout technique, where she would cut
Speaker 3: figures out of paper with scissors and then film them
Speaker 3: moving on a transparent surface to create the action that
Speaker 3: you see on the screen.
Speaker 2: Now, Paul Wegen, who you mentioned earlier, for anyone out
Speaker 2: there who just wondering who that is, he was one
Speaker 2: of the directors and writers on the nineteen fifteen film
Speaker 2: The Golum. You've probably seen images of this. The clay
Speaker 2: golum figure in black and white, very haunting, and he
Speaker 2: also played the golum.
Speaker 3: Yes, that is correct. So in nineteen nineteen, Lada Reiniger
Speaker 3: and Carl Koch together created a silhouette animated short film
Speaker 3: called The Ornament of the Heart in Love, which is,
Speaker 3: in the words of Debbie Lockwood, here about two lovers,
Speaker 3: both ballet dancers, and a morphing ornament between them that
Speaker 3: represents their emotions.
Speaker 2: Now, one thing I really love about that description is
Speaker 2: that if that description sounds like you could easily describe
Speaker 2: a current or upcoming Pixar short, you know. So an
Speaker 2: area of animation, of mainstream animation where we often think
Speaker 2: of like this is where the really inventive ideas and
Speaker 2: formats that are going to be explored, you know, and
Speaker 2: we think of it as kind of at times, we
Speaker 2: can think of it as a place that we can
Speaker 2: only come to after, you know, a century of animation
Speaker 2: and filmmaking. But here we are in nineteen nineteen, and
Speaker 2: there's just as much ingenuity and creativity in using you know,
Speaker 2: different formats to tell a story with visuals.
Speaker 3: That's a very good point. Yeah, early on, there was
Speaker 3: a lot of elasticity about what a film could be,
Speaker 3: what should be the contents of a film.
Speaker 2: So while well, today it's more like what can we
Speaker 2: break to create something new? Like this is an age
Speaker 2: where a lot of stuff was unformed, you know. It
Speaker 2: was the amorphous age of filmmaking.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, So her most his famous film is the
Speaker 3: nineteen twenty six silent movie The Adventures of Prince Ahmed,
Speaker 3: which is an adaptation of the Arabic classic One thousand
Speaker 3: and one Nights, which was one of the first feature
Speaker 3: length animated films in history. And to quote from Lockwood
Speaker 3: here describing her technological and creative process, quote, Reineger's editing
Speaker 3: was meticulous. Starting with more than two hundred and fifty
Speaker 3: thousand frames, she and her crew used just over one
Speaker 3: hundred thousand in the film, which ran for an hour
Speaker 3: and twenty one minutes each second, requiring twenty four frames.
Speaker 3: It took three years to complete and premiered in Volkspoon
Speaker 3: or People's Theater in Berlin when Reineger was twenty seven.
Speaker 3: The film showcased the fantastical potential of animation. A prince
Speaker 3: defeated an army of demons to win over a princess,
Speaker 3: birds battled witches and sorcerers, horses flew. The French film
Speaker 3: director Jeanrenois saw Princemed on its opening night in Paris
Speaker 3: and later recalled that he wanted to tell her, you
Speaker 3: have fairy hands. Reineger designed a complex process to make
Speaker 3: her films. She cut each limb of each figure out
Speaker 3: of black cardboard and thin lead, then join them together
Speaker 3: with wire hinges. For research, she spent hours at the
Speaker 3: Zoo Berlin watching how the animals moved. And then I
Speaker 3: was reading later in this article that she also pioneered
Speaker 3: new technology for creating animated films, including a device called
Speaker 3: a trick tish or trick table, and this involved a
Speaker 3: camera that would be hanging in the air facing down
Speaker 3: onto a table made of layers of glass, which would
Speaker 3: form the stage for the silhouette cutouts to play upon,
Speaker 3: and then you would have a bright light underneath that
Speaker 3: would cause the wire hinges used at the joints of
Speaker 3: these figures to disappear, and it was basically stop motion animation.
Speaker 3: They would take a photo of a that she had
Speaker 3: set out, and then she would advance the figures slightly
Speaker 3: in their movement to advance the action, and then take
Speaker 3: a photo again building the film frame by frame. Now,
Speaker 3: as with any German filmmaker working in the first half
Speaker 3: of the twentieth century, you end up wondering, okay, did
Speaker 3: they end up within the Hitler machine right, Because of
Speaker 3: course Nazi Germany was big on using film as propaganda.
Speaker 3: So I was reading about this, and it seems like
Speaker 3: after Hitler came to power, Lata and Carl left to
Speaker 3: Germany and tried to make a life in other countries
Speaker 3: like France and Italy and England. Apparently they were politically
Speaker 3: opposed to Hitler, but they could not get visas, or
Speaker 3: they couldn't get the visas they wanted to stay permanently
Speaker 3: in the other countries they went to, so it seems
Speaker 3: like they were essentially taking long vacations in other countries
Speaker 3: where they were working and then having to come back
Speaker 3: and then leave again. They were eventually forced to move
Speaker 3: back to Berlin in nineteen forty four, apparently to take
Speaker 3: care of Latta's mother, who is very sick, and I
Speaker 3: can only find evidence that she worked on one film
Speaker 3: in this period called The Golden Goose, which I have
Speaker 3: seen described as a propaganda film, but I can't find
Speaker 3: much about it, so I don't know, but together they
Speaker 3: moved to England in nineteen forty eight and she made
Speaker 3: some children's films for the BBC, and she passed away
Speaker 3: on June nineteenth, nineteen eighty one, at the age of
Speaker 3: eighty two. So the film that we're going to be
Speaker 3: looking at today is from her early period, from nineteen
Speaker 3: twenty two, and it is an adaptation of the Cinderella
Speaker 3: folk tale. I was reading about this in Lockwood's article
Speaker 3: where apparently the Cinderella adaptation was reviewed by The New
Speaker 3: York Times in nineteen twenty eight, where the author Charles
Speaker 3: Morgan wrote, the small black shapes laugh at you from
Speaker 3: a world of their own, into which naturalism makes no
Speaker 3: laborious entry. And I really like phrasing it like that,
Speaker 3: because I think this little animated film is wonderful. And uh,
Speaker 3: and I see what he meant by that with naturalism
Speaker 3: makes no laborious entry. Something about the animation style feels
Speaker 3: so free.
Speaker 2: Yes, yes, this is a beautiful picture. And if anybody
Speaker 2: who wants to see that, the two films that we're
Speaker 2: discussing here, I'll make sure that I include links to
Speaker 2: them or embedded versions of them on the blog post.
Speaker 2: That accompanies this episode at Summuda music dot com. But
Speaker 2: the yeah, the style of this is so divorced from
Speaker 2: from reality. It just comes out of It's like it's
Speaker 2: a reality that is passed from from from fairy tale
Speaker 2: book to fairytale book. You know, there was a there's
Speaker 2: a quote that you included in the in our notes
Speaker 2: for this episode from Ao Scott where he describes quote
Speaker 2: dreamy images that seem to tap right into the collective
Speaker 2: unconscious that suggests both in antidote to Disney and a
Speaker 2: precursor to Tim Burton. And it's interesting that Scott mentioned
Speaker 2: Disney here because in nineteen twenty two, Disney Walt Disney
Speaker 2: the Animator also put out a Cinderella animated short. But
Speaker 2: it is very much connected to the real world. Like
Speaker 2: you see, I didn't even watch it in its entirety.
Speaker 2: I just kind of flipped around and got a sense
Speaker 2: of it. But like there are scenes of like flapper culture,
Speaker 2: you know, and stuff like that, and like it's very
Speaker 2: it's hitched to the real world of the time, whereas yeah,
Speaker 2: this one is it seems to exist in an artistic
Speaker 2: unreality that is so much more engrossing.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so it is the story of Cinderella. The story
Speaker 3: element is fairly straightforward, but it's the animation that really
Speaker 3: sings here. It is an animation based on these silhouettes,
Speaker 3: these cutout these paper cutout figure silhouettes and stop motion animation.
Speaker 3: And as for the plot content, it is decidedly more
Speaker 3: in the brothers grim direction than the sanitized versions would
Speaker 3: come later, like the in the full length animated Cinderella
Speaker 3: by Disney and so in that version, And so that
Speaker 3: means that in this version it is a magic tree
Speaker 3: instead of a fairy godmother, a creepy magic tree on
Speaker 3: a hill and a cemetery.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's as if nature itself is the force that
Speaker 2: answers her call, as opposed to, you know, any particular human,
Speaker 2: humanized force.
Speaker 3: Yeah. You also get that Cinderella's wicked stepsister absolutely does
Speaker 3: chop off part of her own foot in order to
Speaker 3: fit into the slipper and get with the prince. Oh yes,
Speaker 3: but the slipper fills up with blood and it doesn't work.
Speaker 3: And then there's a really funny scene where the other
Speaker 3: sister tries is she's about to chop off her own
Speaker 3: foot to fit in the slipper, and the Prince is
Speaker 3: just like, no, no.
Speaker 2: Yeah, this is such a fun silent film. Like when
Speaker 2: I told that my family, I'm like, hey, guys, we're
Speaker 2: gonna sit down and watch a silent film together. And
Speaker 2: the boy didn't really even know what I meant by
Speaker 2: that because he didn't have much exposure to sign films.
Speaker 2: My wife was hesitant. Then I'm like, don't worry. It's
Speaker 2: it's animated, and it's it's Cinderella, and it's really really delightful.
Speaker 2: It's you know, has kind of a shadow puppetry. I
Speaker 2: look to it, and so they're like, okay, and we
Speaker 2: sit down. We watched it. The the the bits of
Speaker 2: humor generated laughter from all of us. The toe cutting
Speaker 2: made us all scream out loud, you know, in a
Speaker 2: fun way, because it's, you know, the style divorces it
Speaker 2: enough from reality that you're not legitimately horrified, but you're like, ah,
Speaker 2: don't do that, so it Yeah, it's just tremendous fun. Now.
Speaker 3: One choice about this movie that I found very interesting
Speaker 3: was the choice to include the animation method as part
Speaker 3: of the narrative. So I don't know, Rob, did the
Speaker 3: version you watched have title cards or or what language
Speaker 3: were the title cards in if it did.
Speaker 2: Oh, well, the version I watched it did have some
Speaker 2: title cards, but I believe they were No, they were
Speaker 2: in English. Maybe I just didn't read them. I was
Speaker 2: just getting set up at the time. But for the
Speaker 2: most part, Yeah, it's just a visual presentation, and I
Speaker 2: guess it helps to know the story. So as we
Speaker 2: watched it, we were kind of taking it apart a
Speaker 2: little bit. We're like, oh, yeah, I guess she's doing
Speaker 2: this now, Oh, yes, this must be instead of a
Speaker 2: fairy godmother, it's this tree and now the birds are
Speaker 2: involved that sort of thing.
Speaker 3: Well, I meant the inter title cards, yeah, between the action.
Speaker 2: Well, you know now that you mention it, though, Joe.
Speaker 2: The version that I watched with my family was on vimeo, okay,
Speaker 2: and I don't think that one had title cards in it.
Speaker 2: I think that was just the animation. But I've been
Speaker 2: playing the YouTube version in the corner of my screen
Speaker 2: as we record here, and yeah, I'm getting some dialogue
Speaker 2: that was not present in the version we screened.
Speaker 3: Yes, so at the beginning of the version. There are
Speaker 3: different versions. Different ones have different title cards, inner titles,
Speaker 3: and the version that I was watching had the English
Speaker 3: titles that begin what Cinderella suffered from the two sisters
Speaker 3: and her stepmother, how she grew into a fairy princess.
Speaker 3: Here is seen told by a pair of scissors on
Speaker 3: a screen, so they're like including the fact that this
Speaker 3: is made by scissors, and it's in the animation too.
Speaker 3: It begins with black silhouettes on a blue background of
Speaker 3: a small pair of scissors kicking around in the void,
Speaker 3: almost like a frog paddling in the water. And then
Speaker 3: a pair of hands comes in and they chase the
Speaker 3: scissors around, they catch them, and then they use them
Speaker 3: to cut a figure out of a piece of paper,
Speaker 3: and that figure will be our heroine, Cinderella, which I
Speaker 3: thought was a very interesting choice. One totally unrelated side
Speaker 3: note about the inner titles. If you're watching this with kids,
Speaker 3: you might want to check the version you're watching first
Speaker 3: because one of the inner titles in one of the
Speaker 3: ones I saw, had a word in it that used
Speaker 3: to have a different connotation now has Now it is
Speaker 3: a pejorative term used for women, but I think it
Speaker 3: was previously a pejorative term used for women, but with
Speaker 3: different connotations.
Speaker 2: Yes, Fortunately that was not in the version that I
Speaker 2: watched with my family.
Speaker 3: Yes, check which version if you're going to show it
Speaker 3: to kids, But I.
Speaker 2: Do love the visual opening of watching the hands cut
Speaker 2: out a character with the scissors. It reminds me of
Speaker 2: some of the differences you see in puppetry, where you know,
Speaker 2: sometimes it's about hiding the fact that it's puppetry and
Speaker 2: hiding the puppeteer and letting the figures take on a
Speaker 2: life for themselves. Other times you have very visual puppeteers,
Speaker 2: and part of it is about acknowledging that the role
Speaker 2: that the puppeteer plays and bringing this to life, and
Speaker 2: it not mattering that you can see that it is
Speaker 2: not real and is in the story you like. You know,
Speaker 2: you're not looking at real people, You're looking at a
Speaker 2: very stylized form of paper cutting and an animation. But
Speaker 2: that's part of the magic.
Speaker 3: Yeah, totally. And it's very creepy at the beginning actually
Speaker 3: with the scissors and the figure, because when the hands
Speaker 3: finish their work, there's this moment where the figure of
Speaker 3: Cinderella is created and then she's posed dangling with the
Speaker 3: scissors attached to her head and displayed open, and it
Speaker 3: resembles a kind of torture device or something. I don't know.
Speaker 2: I didn't get that so much. I thought I thought
Speaker 2: it was more she was manipulating it with the scissors.
Speaker 2: So it's just the artistos now I do want to
Speaker 2: This is a great place to discuss this though, the
Speaker 2: creepiness quote unquote of this short film. The version that
Speaker 2: you sent me had some added music. Music is a
Speaker 2: whole separate issue in silent film, because, yeah, sometimes you
Speaker 2: have specific works that are passed down where we can
Speaker 2: look at the sheet music and reproduce it. Other times
Speaker 2: we don't know what music, if any, was associated with
Speaker 2: a particular silent film. A lot of times music from
Speaker 2: that era can sound herky, jerky and kind of annoying.
Speaker 2: And you can, of course always play your own music
Speaker 2: on top. And there have been numerous cases where someone
Speaker 2: has composed new music, you know, be it rock or
Speaker 2: electronic or what have you, for classic silent films. So
Speaker 2: the version you and ually sent me had some added music.
Speaker 2: I don't know if it was composed by him for
Speaker 2: this or someone who just picked a track by them,
Speaker 2: but it has music by evangelists.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: The composer, of course, probably most famous for his work
Speaker 2: on Blade runner and I love vangelists, but it's kind
Speaker 2: of creepy music, and it was kind of leading to
Speaker 2: a creepy interpretation of what I was seeing. So just
Speaker 2: a minute or two into it, we switched to some
Speaker 2: more upbeat music to play over it. We played just
Speaker 2: a channel on Soma f M, and I found that
Speaker 2: lighter tone hit almost immediately and was ultimately more fun.
Speaker 2: But the music that we choose or is chosen for us,
Speaker 2: with silent films like this, they can have such a
Speaker 2: huge effect on how we interpret them.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think you're exactly right about that. And it's
Speaker 3: funny because the animation has both elements, Like the animation
Speaker 3: is a little bit creepy, but it's also funny. It's
Speaker 3: both at the same time, and so you can easily
Speaker 3: lean more in one direction or the other by adding
Speaker 3: the right tone in the sound.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Because again, it has some laugh out loud moments. Yeah,
Speaker 2: I'm sure we'll get to them here in a minute.
Speaker 3: So I'm obviously not going to spend a lot of
Speaker 3: time explaining the implied plot. Like it's Cinderella, you basically
Speaker 3: know the plot. I love the cutouts of the Wicked Stepsisters.
Speaker 3: One is very thin and very tall, and the other
Speaker 3: one is very short and stout. And so we see
Speaker 3: the wicked stepsisters being mean. We see the wicked step
Speaker 3: mother abusing Cinderella. She's like poking her with a cane
Speaker 3: while Cinderella is cleaning the stairs. And then you get
Speaker 3: more references to scissors and cutting intertwined with the plot
Speaker 3: in the inner titles. So there's an inner title that
Speaker 3: says snip and we have the Kings rs VP snip
Speaker 3: and the magic birds have set her free.
Speaker 2: Yeah, a lot of fun is had with the magic
Speaker 2: birds in this. Oh, I love the magic birds are
Speaker 2: perfect for this kind of cutout technique.
Speaker 3: Yes, And so according to the story, Cinderella cannot go
Speaker 3: to the Prince's ball, but she has to help her
Speaker 3: wicked stepsisters get ready to attend, and this is a
Speaker 3: good comedic scene. She has to comb their hair and
Speaker 3: lace their corsets for one of their sisters, the very thin,
Speaker 3: very tall one. There's a moment where you see Cinderella
Speaker 3: dumping household objects into her bodice, presumably to fill it out.
Speaker 3: So she's like throwing I think like pots and pans
Speaker 3: in there. It's very funny.
Speaker 2: Yeah, this is this is a lot of fun. And
Speaker 2: you know, another thing worth driving home. You mentioned how
Speaker 2: we didn't really have to describe the plot of of Cinderella.
Speaker 2: One of the reasons is that, like this is pretty
Speaker 2: much a universal story. The basic story of Cinderella exists
Speaker 2: in various cultures. You know. It's just it's it's that
Speaker 2: important of a trope, you know, this idea of the
Speaker 2: downtrodden and the oppressed rising up in this in this nature.
Speaker 2: There's a there's an old Chinese version of this as well.
Speaker 3: Oh, I don't think I knew that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, and there are various other versions of it
Speaker 2: from just around the world, like the It's it's interesting
Speaker 2: how such a potent fairy tale like this you just
Speaker 2: find versions of it throughout human culture.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I'm sure that does help with getting it. And
Speaker 3: the other thing is you mentioned earlier the idea of
Speaker 3: like nature itself sort of being the thing that helps Cinderella.
Speaker 3: In this version, it's not like a single fairy godmother,
Speaker 3: but it's the birds and it's the tree. And it's
Speaker 3: really interesting the way she's got this pre existing connection
Speaker 3: with the birds, like they're just on her side from
Speaker 3: the beginning. So the wicked stepmother is having Cinderella clean
Speaker 3: up spilled lentils from the floor while the wicked stepsisters
Speaker 3: go off to the ball. But then a flock of
Speaker 3: birds come by to help her out, and we get
Speaker 3: a title that says snip and she gathers from her
Speaker 3: apple trees the golden gown of the hesperites the silver coach.
Speaker 3: But when the clock strikes one warn the bird voices
Speaker 3: Cinderella run, and so we see the magic tree and
Speaker 3: Cinderella goes out to this creepy, lonely hillside with a
Speaker 3: tree at the top of it. It's kind of sad
Speaker 3: drooping tree, and the tree ends up granting her wish
Speaker 3: for a gown and a coach to take her to
Speaker 3: the ball.
Speaker 2: I like how this was pre code so she could
Speaker 2: stay out till one.
Speaker 3: And Cinderella's gown I have to say, this looks sort
Speaker 3: of like a cyberpunk pressure suit like Bruce Willis is
Speaker 3: wearing at the beginning of Twelve Monkeys. I guess maybe
Speaker 3: she's going to work in the Prince's virology lab. But
Speaker 3: it's very puffy and it's covered in these lines around
Speaker 3: the top that could be gas hoses.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it looks like it's just made out of nature,
Speaker 2: Like she's coated in mycillium and stuff. You know, it's
Speaker 2: pretty cool looking.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's really good. So Cinderella goes to the ball.
Speaker 3: She dances with the prince. The stepsister is very jealous.
Speaker 3: The prince falls in love with Cinderella and kisses her,
Speaker 3: but then of course she has to flee at midnight,
Speaker 3: and the prince loses her. And then comes the search
Speaker 3: you know from the story, based on the slipper that
Speaker 3: she drops while she's running out, and so you see
Speaker 3: this royal raid go out to find the owner of
Speaker 3: the slipper. They're putting it on people's feet, and when
Speaker 3: the prince comes to the house, Cinderella is made to
Speaker 3: hide in the cellar because the wicked stepmother does not
Speaker 3: want her to be seen by the prince, and the
Speaker 3: wicked stepsisters are trying to they're trying to snag the prince.
Speaker 3: So one of them, yep, she chops part of her
Speaker 3: own foot off. And that part was seriously hilarious.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, yeah, again, we were all just going ah
Speaker 2: when it happened, and you know, I know that that's
Speaker 2: a part of you know, the grimmer versions. Of this tale,
Speaker 2: but I guess it wasn't quite expecting and it happens
Speaker 2: so suddenly too it catches you off guard.
Speaker 3: Yeah, she just reaches down with the knife and just
Speaker 3: chops off the front of her foot, and then she's
Speaker 3: still trying to put the mutilated foot into the slipper,
Speaker 3: but it fills up with blood. So this is the
Speaker 3: X rated version. But eventually, of course, the magic birds
Speaker 3: tell the Prince that Cinderella is hiding in the cellar,
Speaker 3: and he goes down and he gets her out and
Speaker 3: he lifts her up, and it's a happy ending, true love.
Speaker 3: And then there's a great moment where I don't know
Speaker 3: how else to describe this. The wicked stepmother is so
Speaker 3: mad about Cinderella getting to marry the Prince that she
Speaker 3: literally cracks in half, like a fissure runs down the
Speaker 3: middle of her and she looks like a venus fly
Speaker 3: trap opening up.
Speaker 2: That's interesting. It was interesting because it made me think
Speaker 2: of one of our recent episodes. We were talking about
Speaker 2: changes to fairy tales, and there was one in particular
Speaker 2: in which somebody gets so mad they basically explode, which
Speaker 2: I so, I guess it was an idea that existed
Speaker 2: sort of in the fairy tale storytelling world at the time,
Speaker 2: and you know, though, I and perhaps it occur as
Speaker 2: in a written version of Cinderella, but it was. It
Speaker 2: was a delightful surprise here that you're having sort of
Speaker 2: Mortal Kombat type fatalities occurring in this children's tale. Oh but,
Speaker 2: on the speaking of violence in this animated short, on
Speaker 2: the foot cutting, that the first foot cut was fabulous
Speaker 2: and shocking and hilarious, but the second one was even better.
Speaker 2: Oh yes, the second sister goes to put on the
Speaker 2: shoe and it's not fitting either because her foot is
Speaker 2: like too plump. And then you see her hand come
Speaker 2: down with the knife because she's going to do the
Speaker 2: exact same thing cut off part of her foot, and
Speaker 2: the prince's hand slaps it out of the way as
Speaker 2: it's like, nope, nope, you're not doing that trick.
Speaker 3: That not allowed against the rules, no foot cutting. And
Speaker 3: I love the implied sneakiness with the knife or she's like,
Speaker 3: oh I think I dropped something.
Speaker 2: Yeah, let me saw through the bones of my foot.
Speaker 3: So yes, in the end, this movie is definitely worth
Speaker 3: checking out. You can find different versions of it online.
Speaker 3: I think that I have different title card situations and
Speaker 3: different levels of restoration, but I absolutely love her animation style.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's tremendous. I'm really glad you turned me onto
Speaker 2: this one. Yeah, So if you want to see it,
Speaker 2: I just recommend you, know, you can find it on
Speaker 2: the blog, but just go to something like YouTube or
Speaker 2: or any other streaming video side and if you just
Speaker 2: do a search for Cinderella nineteen twenty two, this will
Speaker 2: turn up. You'll probably also turn up the Disney the
Speaker 2: Walt Disney version as well, But this is the one
Speaker 2: to watch. Choose your own music though, whatever you want.
Speaker 2: Really you want to listen to Nurse with Wound while
Speaker 2: watching it, then that's going to create at a certain feel.
Speaker 2: But you can also put on something up beaten peppy.
Speaker 3: You know, you could put on the hair metal band Cinderella.
Speaker 2: Why yeah, why not? I mean, that's that's ultimately the
Speaker 2: fun about this stuff. Do what you will with the
Speaker 2: music on a silent film. I noticed in the Psychotronic
Speaker 2: book by Michael Weldon, like he pretty much had the
Speaker 2: same advice. Like he was like, the music often sucks,
Speaker 2: turn it off if you don't like it, and then
Speaker 2: realize You're gonna have to put in a little bit
Speaker 2: of work sometimes to enjoy these films, but it's worth.
Speaker 3: It, all right. Are we ready to look at our
Speaker 3: second silent film today?
Speaker 2: Yeah? And again, this is one that I think a
Speaker 2: lot of people are not going to be that familiar with.
Speaker 2: I was not familiar with it until I started looking
Speaker 2: around for something to cover, and you know, again, I
Speaker 2: wanted to cover something that that wasn't one of the
Speaker 2: classics that were all somewhat familiar with, you know, that's
Speaker 2: not Nosferatu and so forth, And so I came across
Speaker 2: an Italian science fiction action comedy from nineteen twenty one,
Speaker 2: The Mechanical Man. And it's especially worth discussing on weird
Speaker 2: House cinema because this is the grandfather, or even the
Speaker 2: great grandfather of films like Robot Jocks and gun Head.
Speaker 2: Not only is it a film about robots battling each other,
Speaker 2: it is seemingly the first film about robots battling each other.
Speaker 2: Whoa so the elevator pitch on this one is a
Speaker 2: remote control robot man with exceptional speed and strength is
Speaker 2: captured by criminals and forced to do evil and this
Speaker 2: eventually Coleman in an all out battle between two different robots.
Speaker 3: Now, from what I understand, the robots are definitely what
Speaker 3: drew us in to watch this, and they're a major
Speaker 3: part of the section of the film that remains in
Speaker 3: the archives. But if I understand correctly, the majority of
Speaker 3: the original film was really focused less on the robots
Speaker 3: and more on sort of the exploits of the lead
Speaker 3: villain or antagonist.
Speaker 2: Right, yeah, yeah, that's that very much seems to be
Speaker 2: the case. This was a second film in a proposed
Speaker 2: trilogy that revolved around a cunning female criminal as opposed
Speaker 2: to the robots. The robots I am to understand, we're
Speaker 2: not in the first film.
Speaker 3: Right, and this criminal lady is named do you call
Speaker 3: it her? It's m a d O? Is it Madow
Speaker 3: or Mayto?
Speaker 2: I'm not sure, you know. They never say it out
Speaker 2: loud in the film, so I read it as Matdow
Speaker 2: in my head and kept thinking of it as such. Yes,
Speaker 2: Maddow is described as an evil countess. And the first
Speaker 2: film was a human document from nineteen twenty and there's
Speaker 2: not really much I could find out about it. It's
Speaker 2: possibly probably a lost film in its entirety, so I
Speaker 2: don't think there's any of it that remains, but it
Speaker 2: featured many of the same characters as this film does,
Speaker 2: and perhaps deals with the same central conflict between Maddow
Speaker 2: and the Dara family, which is considered which is centered
Speaker 2: around a dar a patriarch who is a brilliant inventor.
Speaker 3: Okay, yeah, So throughout this film, or at least the
Speaker 3: parts of it, we were able to see Maddow is
Speaker 3: running around doing evil with her identity hidden behind a mask.
Speaker 3: So she's got like a thing wrapped around her face
Speaker 3: and head. And then at the end she is unmasked
Speaker 3: and it is revealed that she is this Russian countess.
Speaker 2: Right, and she's also electrocuted at the end. But I
Speaker 2: guess she wasn't supposed to die because there was a
Speaker 2: third film planned, but it didn't come together in the
Speaker 2: post World War One period. So I thought we might
Speaker 2: just look at some of the people involved in this one,
Speaker 2: since you know, Cinderella did not have people in the
Speaker 2: actual film it was animated and was largely revolved around
Speaker 2: a singular individual. This one had multiple people involved that
Speaker 2: are worth mentioning. First of all, the director was a
Speaker 2: man by the name of Andre Dead who lived eighteen
Speaker 2: seventy nine through nineteen forty He was a French actor
Speaker 2: and director who made a name for himself in this
Speaker 2: series of comedy shorts called the fools Hed Comedies, and
Speaker 2: they all had titles like fools Heads Holiday or Fool's
Speaker 2: Head Has Lost a Needle, So, you know, just little
Speaker 2: comic adventures centered around this one ridiculous individual.
Speaker 3: Fools had Scared Stupid.
Speaker 2: Yeah exactly. You know, these were the earnest movies of
Speaker 2: the day, and these were apparently internationally successful during the
Speaker 2: nineteen hundreds and the nineteen tens, like these were, you know,
Speaker 2: big money as much as anything was big money cinematically
Speaker 2: in those days. They're mostly forgotten today, and certainly Deed
Speaker 2: is I think mostly forgotten today by the public at large.
Speaker 2: But he was a big deal at the time. But
Speaker 2: his career was somewhat disrupted by the outbreak of World
Speaker 2: War One, in which he was conscripted into the reserves,
Speaker 2: and he may have served in the trenches. It seems
Speaker 2: a little foggy on that. And afterwards he returned to
Speaker 2: direct just a few more movies, and The Mechanical Man
Speaker 2: was his final directorial effort. He continued to act through
Speaker 2: nineteen thirty eight, and he acts in this as well.
Speaker 2: He plays a comic character name Saltarello who pops up
Speaker 2: at one point. But yeah, for the most part, like
Speaker 2: he's the director of this is his baby, his mechanical baby.
Speaker 3: Do you know if he was the guy who was
Speaker 3: bouncing his butt up and down on the chair in
Speaker 3: that scene that I couldn't understand.
Speaker 2: I think he was, Yes, a very physical comedy, you know.
Speaker 2: I guess it would be like because I think he
Speaker 2: played Fool's Head in the fools Head movies. So it's like,
Speaker 2: you know, if Ernest Or to direct a film like
Speaker 2: he'd have to go in there for a cameo just
Speaker 2: to keep the crowd happy, that.
Speaker 3: Sort of thing. Okay, Yeah, yeah, So I enjoyed the
Speaker 3: parts of this movie that we were able to see
Speaker 3: that remain I will say, I don't think this guy
Speaker 3: is quite on the Buster Keaton level as far as
Speaker 3: the physical comedy of the Silent Era goes.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Now, the main star of this again, this is
Speaker 2: ultimately about, yes, the robots, but also it's about Matdow,
Speaker 2: this villainess that we've been discussing here, and she is
Speaker 2: played by Valentina Frascaroli, who lived eighteen fifty five through
Speaker 2: nineteen fifty seven. She also played the role in the
Speaker 2: previous movie. She has eighty six film credits on IMDb,
Speaker 2: including a bunch of Fool's Head shorts. According to Mary
Speaker 2: Anne Lewinsky, writing for Il Cinema rich Ovata, she was
Speaker 2: a versatile leading lady actor of the day. She starred
Speaker 2: in both comedies like Clearly the Fools Heead Movie and
Speaker 2: This to a ar degree, but she was also in
Speaker 2: serious films as well. She was in a nineteen twenty
Speaker 2: two film about Dante I believe it had a title
Speaker 2: that translated to the Life and Times of Dante, and
Speaker 2: she was also in an interesting looking puppet themed film,
Speaker 2: The War and the Dream of Momi, from nineteen seventeen. Now,
Speaker 2: as I learned in a Bruce Sterling article about this
Speaker 2: is a twenty twelve piece for Wired magazine. This was
Speaker 2: the second film in what Deed Planned is a Mado trilogy,
Speaker 2: which he says explains why Mattos given so much screen time.
Speaker 2: Mattow is the adventuress. She is a quote scheming white
Speaker 2: Russian exiled countess, So you get the impression that again,
Speaker 2: the first film I think is entirely lost. I can't
Speaker 2: find in really any details about what it was about.
Speaker 2: But she seems like she's always on the run, always
Speaker 2: escaping and falling into more schemes. Even in this film.
Speaker 2: I think she escapes a couple of times, once from
Speaker 2: a prison infirmary by setting it on fire. And this
Speaker 2: scene is also interesting because it contains some mild nudity,
Speaker 2: like some side nudity, but you can't really make anything
Speaker 2: out of it given the quality of the film, Like
Speaker 2: you really have to squint to even tell that there
Speaker 2: was maybe some mild nudity in this scene.
Speaker 3: It's very European.
Speaker 2: And also, I mean it speaks to like what this
Speaker 2: movie was trying to do. It did not have as
Speaker 2: much of a high minded artistic purpose this was about.
Speaker 2: I mean, this is a film in which giant robots
Speaker 2: ultimately battle each other. It has the same sort of
Speaker 2: appeal that it's always had to us, you know, and
Speaker 2: which again I think it speaks to the certainly the
Speaker 2: creativity and you know, the science fiction dreams that were
Speaker 2: present even in the nineteen twenties, but also the fact
Speaker 2: that like people went to the cinema to be entertained this,
Speaker 2: and this was a film that was trying to entertain people.
Speaker 2: Now again, indeed, never got to make that third Matto picture,
Speaker 2: but you know, we can only wonder what could have
Speaker 2: transpired in it. You know, she's again she's electrocuted at
Speaker 2: the end of this film, though perhaps isn't dead, so
Speaker 2: I'm guessing she would have escaped authorities again and she
Speaker 2: would have come back after the Darra family, the Dara
Speaker 2: family again being the family of the inventor who creates
Speaker 2: giant robots.
Speaker 3: So the version of this that I saw had Italian
Speaker 3: inner titles, and there was there were a lot that
Speaker 3: I went by, and I did not have time to
Speaker 3: translate them, so I don't know what they said. But
Speaker 3: there was one I recognized multiple times, which was where
Speaker 3: it just said corto cercuto.
Speaker 2: And short short circuit. Oh there you go. Yeah. Now,
Speaker 2: as we've alluded to already, this was for a long
Speaker 2: time a lost film, and today we do not have
Speaker 2: all of it. You know, this is another sad fact
Speaker 2: about film from this period is that they are not
Speaker 2: always complete if they did survive, and in many cases
Speaker 2: we've lost everything. There are some really notoriously lost or
Speaker 2: partially lost films, probably the the the gold standard being
Speaker 2: Todd Browning's nineteen twenty seven horror film London After Midnight,
Speaker 2: which starred Lawn Cheney. I feel like, even though you
Speaker 2: know you haven't seen it, you've seen images from it.
Speaker 2: You've seen those stills of lawn Cheney and this brilliant,
Speaker 2: you know, frightening get up is this kind of ghoulish
Speaker 2: vampire in a tall hat.
Speaker 3: Yeah. We talked about this, I know, in our Invention
Speaker 3: episodes about the early days of film, Like I think
Speaker 3: when we were discussing Ali Ski Blachet, we talked about
Speaker 3: how a huge number of her films are lost.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And it's crazy to think about this, especially with
Speaker 2: films like London After Midnight, because this was a film
Speaker 2: that grossed over a million dollars in nineteen twenty seven.
Speaker 2: But you know, the last known copy of it was
Speaker 2: destroyed in a nineteen sixty five MGM vault fire. So
Speaker 2: the only thing that survives today are our images from it.
Speaker 2: And we do have a lot of images from London
Speaker 2: after Midnight, but that's what some people have used to
Speaker 2: reconstruct the film in its entirety, just making remaking the
Speaker 2: film with still images. Now It's a similar case with
Speaker 2: the Mechanical Man, except we were not able to We
Speaker 2: were able to bring back some of it. So the
Speaker 2: original film is thought to have been sixty to eighty
Speaker 2: minutes in length, but it was a thought completely lost
Speaker 2: for many years until reels from the Portuguese version turned
Speaker 2: up in Brazil, and this amounts to about twenty six
Speaker 2: minutes of film total. And luckily it's footage from the
Speaker 2: later portions of the film. Because it's a giant robot movie.
Speaker 2: You know how giant robot movies go, They're going to
Speaker 2: really have most of the special effects in the back end.
Speaker 2: It's kind of like if RoboCop two were a lost
Speaker 2: film and you got to reclaim half of it, which
Speaker 2: half would you get? Which half would you want? You
Speaker 2: would want the later half in which the robots battle
Speaker 2: each other.
Speaker 3: I guess then you would miss most of that stuff
Speaker 3: with like the twelve year old drug dealer hitman or whatever.
Speaker 2: Right, you would lose a lot of interesting stuff, and
Speaker 2: more of the point, you would lose stuff that helps
Speaker 2: you make sense of the later stuff. And certainly that's
Speaker 2: one of the cases with the Mechanical Man, watching the
Speaker 2: fragments that remain. It's very interesting. The robots are fabulous looking.
Speaker 2: They're these oh man, they're like they they're you know,
Speaker 2: they're obviously costumes, but they have this cool mechanical like
Speaker 2: steam punk kind of look to them, or I guess
Speaker 2: it would be diesel punk, and you know, they're they're
Speaker 2: sort of mean faced and violent and oh it's They're
Speaker 2: just fabulous, but you're often confused as to what's going on.
Speaker 2: You know, I had to I had to look back
Speaker 2: at It's some ride ups to really make sense of
Speaker 2: what was happening and how this would have featured, how
Speaker 2: this would have factored into the full version of the film.
Speaker 3: Well, with those limitations in mind, would you like to
Speaker 3: talk about the plot?
Speaker 2: Yeah, such as it is. This is the plot. Basically,
Speaker 2: a Professor Diara creates a super fast, super strong, remote
Speaker 2: control robot that is going to help out humanity, but
Speaker 2: then enter the criminal mastermind Madow. She has the scientist
Speaker 2: killed and tries to steal the plans for the mechanical
Speaker 2: man the criminals. She and the criminals are caught, but
Speaker 2: she escapes again by setting the infirmary on fire, kidnaps
Speaker 2: the scientist's niece, and obtains the plans, so she builds
Speaker 2: her own mechanical man, goes on a rampage with it.
Speaker 2: Just sort of like I don't know that there was
Speaker 2: any like grand criminal plan. It was just sort of
Speaker 2: like crime in general, Like, Wow, now that I have
Speaker 2: the robot, I can do crime, more crime and faster
Speaker 2: crime than ever before. So that's what happens. But the
Speaker 2: scientist's brother, who survives, uses the original mechanical man to
Speaker 2: stop her, so it all culminates in a big robot
Speaker 2: battle inside an opera house that ultimately destroys the opera house.
Speaker 3: Yes, now, I was making a few notes as I
Speaker 3: was watching this. One is that I really liked Madow's
Speaker 3: escape from prison or the hospital or wherever she is
Speaker 3: because it's a multi stage procedure where she injects something
Speaker 3: and fakes out the orderlies and then starts a fire
Speaker 3: and then gets out. It's it's it's a good sequence.
Speaker 3: But beyond that, as I was saying earlier, you know,
Speaker 3: I tried my best, but there were some scenes where
Speaker 3: I had no idea what's going on on screen. So
Speaker 3: the main thing I wanted to ask about is what's
Speaker 3: going on with the dude? Possibly the director frantically bouncing
Speaker 3: on the armchair. Could you tell?
Speaker 2: I could not tell this was This was a scene that,
Speaker 2: again I'd have to chalk up to maybe being just
Speaker 2: a wink for the audience that involves like a beloved
Speaker 2: comic actor who also directed the film, kind of a cameo.
Speaker 2: Maybe that means nothing to modern viewers.
Speaker 3: It's the it's the nineteen twenty one version of Jim
Speaker 3: Carrey going alrighty.
Speaker 2: Then yeah, yeah, maybe so yeah, it would be it
Speaker 2: would be like if if Jim Carrey directed a robot
Speaker 2: movie but also showed up and did one of his
Speaker 2: old bits just in the middle of it, you know. Yeah.
Speaker 2: But the other thing about you know, confusing moments in
Speaker 2: this film, you know, we can chalk a lot of
Speaker 2: it up to the fragmentary nature of what remains, but
Speaker 2: you know, we can also point to possible shortfalls in
Speaker 2: the state of the medium at the time, or even
Speaker 2: filmmaker capability, because ultimately, Deed would not will not be
Speaker 2: the last film director to craft an incoherent action picture
Speaker 2: or to struggle transitioning from short form laughs to longer
Speaker 2: form dramatic storytelling. So I don't know, it's hard to
Speaker 2: tell exactly where all the blame levels out.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so there's some of that disconnect in movies that
Speaker 3: we've looked at. You remember with Doctor X there was
Speaker 3: this strange mixture of creepiness and comedy, and not the
Speaker 3: kind of comedy that usually goes along with creepiness in
Speaker 3: movies today, a very wet, kind of slapstick, goofy, gooberree
Speaker 3: comedy alongside the synthetic flesh.
Speaker 2: Synthetic flesh.
Speaker 3: Yes, but I will also say to give the director
Speaker 3: credit here. I mean, we're dealing with a number of limitations.
Speaker 3: We are dealing with time distance. This was a long
Speaker 3: time ago things just you know, cinema felt different than
Speaker 3: we were dealing with a language barrier. We were not
Speaker 3: watching this in translation. This was in a language we
Speaker 3: don't speak, and we're dealing with and like watching only
Speaker 3: a fragmentary part of the second half of a silent film.
Speaker 3: So there's a lot of stuff getting in the way
Speaker 3: of us understanding.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Absolutely, but I'm glad that this much of it
Speaker 2: has survived because you know, especially the scenes where well, yes,
Speaker 2: when the robots are battling each other, it's awesome, but
Speaker 2: are all the scenes of robot Mischief are just excellent.
Speaker 3: Oh yes, yes, I love So. There's one part with
Speaker 3: a cocktail party where they're playing some kind of Marco
Speaker 3: Polo type game. They tie a napkin around a man's
Speaker 3: face and they spin him around and he's chasing all
Speaker 3: these women in the in the party room. And then
Speaker 3: a giant mecha man just burst through the window and
Speaker 3: is like, I am here to cause panic, and he
Speaker 3: puts a dude inside a wardrobe, carries him up to
Speaker 3: the roof of a castle, and I think he's gonna
Speaker 3: throw him off the castle tower. Yeah, then I guess
Speaker 3: the guy gets away and he kind.
Speaker 2: Of like falls out of it and then repels down
Speaker 2: the tower. It's elaborate and ridiculous. Yeah. There's also the
Speaker 2: wonderful scene where it's like a dinner party and I
Speaker 2: had to I had to rely on Sterling's right up
Speaker 2: and wired to make sense of what was happening. But
Speaker 2: I mean fully happening, because apparently the idea is the
Speaker 2: robot has shown up controlled by Mattow at this at
Speaker 2: this party, and it's but it's pretending to be a
Speaker 2: person in a robot costume. Yes, yeah, and so they're
Speaker 2: all like, oh, it's a wonderful, wonderful costume. Come on
Speaker 2: in and have some champagne. And so it's like calling
Speaker 2: for champagne and having a lady set on its lap.
Speaker 2: And then things get out of hand.
Speaker 3: Yes, the robot sexually harasses a female partygoer, and then
Speaker 3: the woman's husband gets mad at the robot and punches it,
Speaker 3: and then he he pulls out a pistol to duel
Speaker 3: the robot, and the robot crushes him.
Speaker 2: Yeah. There there's more than one scene in which somebody
Speaker 2: pulls out a pistol and fires a bunch of shots
Speaker 2: point blank into the robot to no avail, and then
Speaker 2: the robot just like swats them.
Speaker 3: So there's chaos at the opera. But then in the
Speaker 3: midst of all this, you end up with a mecha
Speaker 3: man versus mechamn because there's I think, as you already
Speaker 3: said this, but the dead scientist's brother makes his own
Speaker 3: mecha man and or.
Speaker 2: He uses the original I think to battle the new
Speaker 2: one that the that the criminals have made. Oh, either way,
Speaker 2: you end up in the same place, good robot versus
Speaker 2: bad robot. You know, a time tested formula.
Speaker 3: Right, but they're having to be controlled like Mattow is
Speaker 3: actively controlling the robot in real time by like, by
Speaker 3: like turning wheels and stud operating steam vents and things.
Speaker 3: This is going to get a very score on intuitive controls.
Speaker 3: But the other thing that I thought was interesting was
Speaker 3: as Madow controls her mechaman during the duel. Unless I'm misunderstanding,
Speaker 3: it looks like she's watching the duel live on some
Speaker 3: kind of TV screen as she controls her robot fighter.
Speaker 3: And this was in nineteen twenty one. There's no such
Speaker 3: thing as CCTV at this time.
Speaker 2: Right, Yeah, this was a complete glimpse into the future.
Speaker 2: Sterling wrote that at the twenty two minute twenty nine
Speaker 2: second mark quote Mattow watches the mechanisms battling through a
Speaker 2: flat wall mounted remote surveillance televisor screen. So I mean,
Speaker 2: that's awesome. I mean, this is a great This is
Speaker 2: a great example of early science fiction and that it
Speaker 2: gets something phenomenally right, while also you know, it maybe
Speaker 2: doesn't properly predict the way that controls will work in
Speaker 2: the future. For things like this, you know, it's a
Speaker 2: wonderful mashup of actually pretty spot on digital technology to come.
Speaker 2: And then also a reliance on very mechanical control systems.
Speaker 3: Another thing that's interesting is that the screen she's watching
Speaker 3: things play out on is not from the point of
Speaker 3: view of the robot, right, So what's sending the image?
Speaker 2: Yeah, it would have to be like a robotic drone
Speaker 2: that is also part of the operation that is not
Speaker 2: presented in the film. I don't know, something of that nature. Yeah,
Speaker 2: or maybe it's a telescope. I mean, there's so many
Speaker 2: different directions you could go in and then ultimately, you know,
Speaker 2: given the nature of the film, I guess they don't
Speaker 2: really have to explain it. They just But it's interesting
Speaker 2: too that they didn't explain it. There's so many films
Speaker 2: I can think of where the film is that it
Speaker 2: it pains to really elaborate and describe to the audience
Speaker 2: what sort of technology is being used and how it
Speaker 2: works and what the rules are. And yet this film
Speaker 2: is rolling out, you know, to your point CCTV on
Speaker 2: a flat screen and they don't seem to have to
Speaker 2: explain it at all, unless it's explained in the lost
Speaker 2: portion of the film of course.
Speaker 3: Well it's funny because it's an that is it's immediately
Speaker 3: apparent what you know, what its function is like.
Speaker 2: You, Yeah, it probably comes back to the video drone quote, right. Yeah,
Speaker 2: she is doing what you were doing right now and
Speaker 2: watching the screen. So in a way, it's kind of brilliant.
Speaker 3: Yeah. The televisor screen is the retina of the mind's eye.
Speaker 3: Whatever robots appear on it emerges raw experience.
Speaker 2: Let's the other things to mention about this film. I
Speaker 2: would say that the special effects are pretty cool. There's,
Speaker 2: you know, in addition to robots like breaking through gates
Speaker 2: and pulling out safes and whatnot, there's a scene where
Speaker 2: a speeding robot chases after I believe it's a car
Speaker 2: and tears you know. So it's it's it creates this
Speaker 2: this wonderful illusion that you don't you don't instantly think
Speaker 2: of as being even possible at the time in filmmaking,
Speaker 2: and yet they're they're pulling it off. Yeah, and then
Speaker 2: I think the other thing that was surprising about this is,
Speaker 2: on one hand, you just don't expect to see a
Speaker 2: giant robot battle in a film from the nineteen twenties.
Speaker 2: But fiction has basically been around, had been around for
Speaker 2: decades at this point, with such titles as The steam Man,
Speaker 2: of the Prairies by Edward s Ellis from eighteen sixty
Speaker 2: eight or Jules Verns The Steamhouse from eighteen eighty. So
Speaker 2: again it's just neat and worth remembering that people in
Speaker 2: the nineteen twenties were also really into cool sci fi concepts,
Speaker 2: many of which still enthrall us today, and you know,
Speaker 2: are still going to always keep making them. We're not
Speaker 2: going to stop making giant robot battle movies. There's just
Speaker 2: something about them that is wonderful. You know, there's the
Speaker 2: idea of you know, the small made large of things
Speaker 2: that are echoes of the human form or animal form
Speaker 2: and mechanical construction battling each other. And then also we
Speaker 2: have to consider that this film came out after World
Speaker 2: War One, and that Deed himself was apparently witnessed to
Speaker 2: the European conflict, perhaps directly.
Speaker 3: So.
Speaker 2: Despite the fact that this is totally not a serious film,
Speaker 2: that it has a very farcical fee to it, it
Speaker 2: still may have something to say, no matter how shallow,
Speaker 2: about the new age of warfare in which machines like
Speaker 2: tanks and warplanes have just utterly changed the landscape of war.
Speaker 3: I think it was around the same time that we
Speaker 3: talked on Invention about remote controlled robots as something that
Speaker 3: people were claiming to have invented at this time, whether
Speaker 3: or not they were actually very effective. Yeah, I don't
Speaker 3: recall the details on that, Yeah.
Speaker 2: But certainly it's something that is an idea that's been
Speaker 2: knocking around the human imagination for quite some time. So
Speaker 2: you know, it shouldn't come as surprised to see it
Speaker 2: in the nineteen twenties. But I guess on some level,
Speaker 2: I feel like I have been kind of reprogrammed to
Speaker 2: think of the nineteen fifties as the birth period of
Speaker 2: the sci fi robot, you know, because maybe in part
Speaker 2: because of there being a lot of images from that
Speaker 2: time period. And you know, if you had to, like,
Speaker 2: if you were to quiz me before this and say,
Speaker 2: when was the first Sci Fi robot? Might just instantly
Speaker 2: think to the fifties, even though there are definitely examples
Speaker 2: from a prior to that decade. And you know, here
Speaker 2: is one of the prime ones right here.
Speaker 3: By the way, I think that thing I was just
Speaker 3: talking about is in our episodes of Invention on the
Speaker 3: Death Ray if you want to warn Oh, okay, but yes,
Speaker 3: I agree with you on all of that. About fiction.
Speaker 3: I mean, it's gonna be robot jocks forever.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, we just we just keep doing it and
Speaker 2: I will keep watching them apparently no matter what era
Speaker 2: they're from. All Right, Well, I hope this was a
Speaker 2: lot of fun for everybody. Maybe we introduced you to
Speaker 2: a couple of new silent shorts that you weren't familiar with.
Speaker 2: Maybe you did know of these films already and would
Speaker 2: like to share your take on them. Certainly, go out
Speaker 2: watch them and let us know. Also, let us know
Speaker 2: if you like this kind of format, because obviously there
Speaker 2: are a lot of short films out there. It might
Speaker 2: be kind of neat to do this from time to time,
Speaker 2: Like maybe you know, to come back to Cronenberg, maybe
Speaker 2: we do one where we look at a couple of
Speaker 2: short films, early films from David Cronenberg, crack those open,
Speaker 2: you know, tackling things that you know otherwise wouldn't make
Speaker 2: for a full episode of Weird House.
Speaker 3: I don't know about that one in particular, but in general,
Speaker 3: I'm game.
Speaker 2: Let's see. So yes, Weird House Cinema. If you want
Speaker 2: to catch other episodes, this airs every Friday in the
Speaker 2: Stuff to Blow your Mind Feed It is a place
Speaker 2: for us to step away from the science for a
Speaker 2: little bit and talk more about just a weird movie,
Speaker 2: or in this case, movies. But as you can see,
Speaker 2: we often find ways to tie it into other pieces
Speaker 2: of content that we've put out. And oh yeah, and
Speaker 2: of course we'll be back next week. And I'm not
Speaker 2: going to tell you what the film is going to be,
Speaker 2: but I will say it is another Florida movie, So
Speaker 2: be prepared.
Speaker 3: Cueue up that Lion King song. Huge Things. As always
Speaker 3: to our wonderful audio producer Seth Nicholas Johnson. If you
Speaker 3: would like to get in touch with us with feedback
Speaker 3: on this episode or any other, to suggest a topic
Speaker 3: for the future, or just to say hello, you can
Speaker 3: email us at contact at stuff to Blow your Mind
Speaker 3: dot com.
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